Rather
than focus on all of my various crippling issues this week, I've
decided I'm going to hand the focus off to a filmmaker I think is
pretty frickin' cool. I've been holding onto these reviews for a
while so we could put them up for your enjoyment around Halloween.
So here they are - three films on DVD by Mr. Jose Mojica Marins,
otherwise known as Coffin Joe.

As a filmmaker, Coffin Joe is a Brazilian Hitchcock, Bava and Buñel
all wrapped into one blood-soaked package. But he's not just a
filmmaker... oh no. He's also the first true horror film star of
Brazil and a big enough cult icon here in the States. His character
is a bit of Freddy, some Cryptkeeper thrown in for good measure,
with the undying nature of Jason Voorhees. And he's got an exclusive
cardkey into Hell. Actor, writer, producer and director Jose Mojica
Marins has been horrifying audiences since the 1960s. Clad in a top
hat, black cape and his signature long curled fingernails here's
Coffin Joe in all of his glory.

"What
is life? It is the beginning of death. What is death? It is the end
of life."

It all started with a dream Marins had one night. He was about to
begin a doomed-from-the-start production about juvenile delinquency,
when he fell asleep and woke remembering being dragged against his
will through a cemetery by a man dressed in black. Like some modern
day Ebenezzer Scrooge, Marins found himself face to face with a
tombstone bearing his name. But instead of changing his life for the
better, and funding Christmas parties across Brazil, Marins chose to
actually become the man in black of his nightmare. He embraced his
fear and became one with it. And from that fevered dream came Coffin
Joe.

In At Midnight Joe is a
tyrannical assmunch, really. He's a guy with a stick shoved so far
up in him, that he could chalk it with his tongue. He's in a
marriage with a woman who can't bear him a son, and he hates the
people in his town so much that he laughs at the pain they feel over
death. He's in a position to view this pain up close and personal,
seeing as he's the town's mortician. Having had enough of it all, he
arrives home one evening, sets himself up in front of a window on
Good Friday and eats a meal of forbidden meat.

Deciding that he wants a son more than anything, he sets about
killing his barren wife and stealing the ripe and lovely girlfriend
of his best friend. Death begets death and Joe goes head-long into
Hell willingly. But in the world of Coffin Joe, the dead are just as
dangerous as the living and, when wronged, they will come back and
take their revenge.

This film is nothing but a haunted house carnival ride. And that's
not a bad thing. Coffin Joe introduces us to the film in a little
monologue meant to set the audience up with Joe's own personal
theory on life. Then we jump to a series of cast introductions from
moments before they die in the film (just so we know our place).
After a series of Halloween-style credits with screams punctuating
them in the background, our "hero" (a scary gypsy witch)
lets us know how brave we are for taking this film on head first.

Now... at first glance you'd think this film is all about pure
shock value - that Marins intends only to sicken us and therefore
make a name for himself. His Coffin Joe persona is nothing but a no
account, with no respect for human life. And that's true. But
there's more. This film and its sequel are both little life lessons,
religious propaganda and affirmations rolled into two nice packages.
Coffin Joe IS evil and he has no respect for God, life or love. But
with that, we see that he's wrong. Love is powerful, life has value
and somewhere God is making things right. But Joe is a spunky guy.
The evidence is all around him and yet he chooses not to see it.
Coffin Joe is the Brazilian Homer Simpson, except he's way evil.

Source-wise, At Midnight is
pretty beat up, and this is in no way a reference DVD. But it looks
great for what it is. Our buddies at Fantoma really helped this film
out a lot. The video suffers from all the same things it suffered
from when it was made: badly superimposed images, blurred shots,
poor dissolves, oversaturation and loss of detail. But we have to
keep in mind that the film stock Marins used was either borrowed or
bought real cheap, so there's no faulting the transfer for
imperfections the film stock has. This is how this film has looked
since it was born. There are some signs of age, dust, white density
and scratches, but I'd be willing to bet that most of that was there
from the beginning as well. The picture is presented in its original
full frame aspect ratio, with deep blacks, muted grays and thick
whites. The sound is a mono track that is as flawed as the film
stock, but suits the film fine.

The extras are pretty stellar with a little something called
The Making of At Midnight I'll Take Your
Soul: An Interview with Director Jose Mojica Marins which
is exactly that and is pretty neat in that it shows us Joe today.
There are also theatrical trailers for all of the films released by
Fantoma on DVD: At Midnight I'll Take
Your Soul, This Night I'll
Possess Your Corpse and Awakening
of the Beast. And, best of all, there's a comic book
reproduction insert, entitled O Estranho
Mundo de Ze do Caixao: Noite Negra. It's an exact
reproduction of a comic book series created by Joe back at the top
of his popularity, and it's done up as an EC Comic gone straight to
Hell.

"Is
life everything, and death nothing? Or is death everything and life
nothing?"

This Night is a direct sequel
to At Midnight. I can't really
sum up the opening, since it kinda sorta ruins the previous film's
ending, but Coffin Joe finds himself in a hospital and, after his
recovery, is cleared of any charges that might stand against him. So
he heads back to town to start up his quest for the perfect son all
over again, with the help of his ever-faithful hunchback.

Joe gets to work, kidnapping all of the town's women and putting
them through tests to see if they can carry his waiting brood.
Snakes, bugs and spiders are unleashed on his potential brides and
the screaming starts for them and for us. Eventually, he widdles the
choices down to one super chick... that is until an even more
perfect bride enters the picture in the guise of the mayor's young
virginal daughter (with quite the dark side). She's a real "Coffin
Josephine" and Joe is head over heals in love. But an unruly
mob, a strongman with a chip on his shoulder and a disturbingly
worm-filled decent into the lower depths of Hell (filmed in a
beautifully surreal full color palette) show him that his evil ways
may not work out for him in the long run.

This Night is a better flick
than At Midnight - it's just
not as, well, classic. Still, there's no doubt about it, this is
Coffin Joe in his full-on unibrowed glory. The film is creepy,
crawly and pretty disturbing for a low budget foreign film staring a
guy in a top hat and cape. But like its predecessor, there are a lot
of lessons here about morals, religion and the right way to treat
people. That Marins has to take it so far in the opposite direction
to make his point is interesting. If you're looking for propaganda,
it's in here. But if you're looking for an entertaining spookfest,
it fulfills that just as well.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse
looks great on DVD. There are some original print issues all over
the place, and it's obvious that an Nth generation dupe was used for
the opening footage. But so what? It just adds to the look of the
film, which is presented in non-anamorphic widescreen in beautiful
black and white. The blacks are solid and the grays and whites are
very clean. The 10-minute color sequence towards the end of the film
could have been on better stock, but it still looks incredibly cool.
Once again, the sound is a plain old mono track that suits the film
fine.

Once again, the extras are great and include The
Making of This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse: An Interview with
Director Jose Mojica Marins, which is a current interview
with the master, all three theatrical trailers and another comic
book reproduction, this one entitled O
Estranho Mundo de Ze do Caixao: Magia Negra. Be afraid.

There's
only one thing more evil than Coffin Joe, and that, my friends, is
drugs. Icky despicable drugs. And this film is all about the horrors
of LSD. Here, Coffin Joe is part of a counsel studying the effects
of the drug on the human mind. Joe's brought in to play demon from
Hell because a popular psychologist figures that if anyone saw
Coffin Joe in their dreams, it would scare them straight. So what we
get in the film is a bunch of vignettes strung together featuring
the various types of degenerates who do the drugs, from hippie
gangs, sex slave traders, pimps and cheating spouses - it's just a
parade of sick people. After the vignettes, the psychologist brings
the people from the stories together to show them a Coffin Joe film,
gives them a shot of LSD and watches their bad trips unfold (in
beautiful color once again).

Awakening is little more than
a more surreal and cooler Reefer Madness-style
propaganda film - except it's got Coffin Joe in it. The film is well
done, but less scary than the previous two films. I like it, but in
terms of Coffin Joe fixes, this one just satisfies the craving and
does no more.

The film is presented in non-anamorphic widescreen in black and
white with a color reel thrown in towards the end. It's a little
better source-wise than the other two films, and features the same
glorious transfer. The sound is also mono and does a good job
creeping us out.

The extras include an interview with Marins about the film shot
recently, the three trailers and another comic book reproduction,
entitled O Estranho Mundo de Ze do
Caixao: A Praga

Awakening
of the Beast

Out
of the three DVDs, the first two are absolute must-see Halloween
treats - so pick 'em up for this season. The other one isn't too
Halloween friendly, but it's still pretty cool and should be seen at
some point. So what are you waiting for?

And while you're busy picking those up, I'll be checking out some
more discs. We'll see you in a week. Until then, keep spinning those
discs!